Fifty shades of football: Day 14

(We’re counting down to the first Saturday of college football, now 37 days away)

We talk a lot about coaches on the hot seat, but which coaches are on the coolest seats – that is, who doesn’t have anything to worry about, regardless of what happens on the field this fall?

Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports does “Hot Seat Ratings” every preseason and it’s no surprise that the coolest seats in the SEC belong to Alabama’s Nick Saban, Missouri’s Gary Pinkel and a new coach, Hugh Freeze of Ole Miss. Vandy’s James Franklin, South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier and new Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin are on very cool seats as well.

Man, a seat can get hot in a hurry. LSU’s Les Miles is in no danger after making it to the national championship game, but his seat could get hot if his Tigers underachieve this fall. Georgia Mark Richt is in much better position after a 10-win campaign in 2011.

The league’s hottest seats? Joker Phillips at Kentucky and Derek Dooley are familiar names for such a list, but Dodd also includes Arkansas rent-a-coach John L. Smith. In fact, Smith and Dooley are the only coaches with hot seat ratings of the maximum, 5.0 – “Win or be fired.”